Who or what is really to blame for the world coronavirus pandemic?
Today’s Chicago Tribune news contains various articles to imply blame for the present world pandemic.
The Purpose of This Post
Is to relate ancient proverb verses to the blame game to focus on the prostitution game and distractions we need to instead discern that is now in the news.
Prostitution Definition
: the act or practice of engaging in promiscuous sexual relations especially for money
King Solomon – (Proverbs 6:26-28)
For the levy of the prostitute is poverty, and the adulteress preys upon your very life. Can a man embrace fire and his clothes not be burned? Can a man walk on hot coals without scorching his feet?
What’s My Point(s)
During the inception of WWII, the USA was prepared to divert manufacturing capabilities quickly to supply needed armaments of the world to combat the enemy.
Over time, the USA outsourced this manufacturing capability to global suppliers to either profit or remain price competitive with competition.
In other words, same as a man who may become distracted with a fiery prostitute (profit or survival) for pleasure (lower selling prices or higher profits) and disregard the conquests of being burnt, (STD diseases or lacking manufacturing capability and medical supplies or equipment) to combat the enemy. (coronavirus)
In My Opinion
We need to end the blame game taking place in the USA because it is a path of folly.
For every finger being pointed to blame someone else can point back at someone in return.
For example, if blaming our present leaders for not taking the coronavirus seriously in the early part of this year, who or what caused their distraction during that critical time?
If blaming someone in the USA for allowing manufacturing capabilities to be decimated by outsourcing to profit or obtain lower selling prices, who or what political and economic leaders distractions are to blame?
In my opinion, lets end the blame game and start pointing toward a path to make plans for the future to hopefully be better prepared for the next pandemic.
Hopefully to not get our feet burned again because of our promiscuity for profit, cheaper prices, competitive distractions, or political distractions.
Regards and goodwill blogging
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You present a good cry for focusing on the immediate problem and moderation of our emotions. But I should submit that it’s human to assign “blame” as part of the process from which we classify and categorize threats. In essence, blame is an emotional response to finding the cause or source in order to avoid placing ourselves at such risk in the future. Our American democracy is completely designed to represent the concerns of the American people. Therefore we have “built” ourselves into expecting government to protect us from our enemies while at the same time guard our human freedoms. We’ve built an immense and successful capitalist free market and a huge military to protect all that. So.. when government fails to do something we have come to expect it to do protect us, we blame leadership… which by extension we are blaming ourselves.. and that’s the politics of it all.
But this is a pandemic. The true “blame” for all of this will likely settle on two areas.
1. The nationalistic political mood of the world which set the political environment to that of more an isolationist fervor. Political borders, boundaries, are important to keep away outside influences of other nations, cultures, and politics. Global market inter-dependencies are considered a threat to this nationalism.
2. Because of the above the world has addressed the disease threat based entirely on the “me against you” or “this is your problem not my problem”. No disease can be isolated by political borders… and here we are, a world going through a desire to set up barriers between each other in some attempt at protectionism. There is NO politics that recognizes that disease is a threat to the all of humanity… only the threat to each other. When it comes to disease.. no man is an island.
The ONLY solution… the entire world MUST cooperate.. or be made to cooperate… to intervene within the political boundaries of ANY nation that has an impending disease outbreak. Just as a disease honors no borders, our ability to fight the disease should also include no borders. This isn’t about stopping global markets and bringing domestic manufacturing back to the States. Even if that could be done… what exactly are we preparing for.. to survive and let the rest of the world succumb to disease and consume itself? The ONLY way we solve this is recognize this is not a “country” problem but a world problem.
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Doug,
Your state “The ONLY solution… the entire world MUST cooperate. or be made to cooperate… to intervene within the political boundaries of ANY nation that has an impending disease outbreak.”
Noble thought, similar to the concept of the United Nations, which has proven over time to have failed. Failed because it has proven unmanageable in practice.
In my opinion, globalism is fine up to a point.
The point being effective management and policies which have been recognized and taught in Business Management 101 and Purchasing 101.
In Business 101 it is well recognized fact there are limitations of supervisor control when the numbers being supervised exceeds a numerical number or ratio of supervisors to employees.
In Purchasing Management 101, the pitfalls of having one single source risks are far greater than multiple sources.
Multiply these concepts exponentially over Nations and populations, and in the case of a central Federal government Ove 50 States in the USA with various differences in cultures, it becomes apparent that while the concepts may be noble and idealistic, the end result of your statement is that it is and always has been unmanageable in practical terms. And will always remain that way as experienced in both ancient and contemporary history.
In other words, the only solution is to understand that economic and political theories are useless if they are unmanageable.
As for the USA economic theories of outsourcing 90 percent of critical medical supplies or parts, an old idiom best describes the wisdom and folly of those theories in time of crisis.
“A bird in hand is better than two in the bush.”some nations cannot compare to the USA vast resources or ever be capable of being self-sufficient, the only sad positive lesson of coronavirus in my opinion is that hopefully that this sad experience will be a lesson in future.
A lesson of what is wise or foolish in comparison to theory vs unpractical management idealism..
Regards and goodwill blogging.
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You seem to have forgotten, our record setting economic recovery from the 2008 collapse. The growth has been including American companies with overseas corporate processes, typically manufacturing and to a large degree, assembly. Don’t you think those corporations know how to manage foreign centralized and de-centralized manufacturing and distribution channels by now?
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Doug,
The large companies know how to manage to either stay competitive or make profits.
Keep in mind some companies did not want to outsource but were forced to by their competitors who had no reservations or concerns other than to maximize profits for their shareholders and their executive bonuses.
What was needed was a government policy to not allow one company to profit by outsourcing 100 percent of a critical commodity such as medicine or military parts needed in case of war, whether it be a virus or human enemy..
Regards and goodwill blogging.
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Ok, two things… no company was “forced” to do anything… unless you want to imply that they were “forced” by their stockholders to sell widgets and make a profit in the marketplace. That requires being competitive, and a lot of that was outsourcing. You already know that. Market forces. As a business you adjust, evolve, of fall by the wayside.
The other item you mention,.. regarding the government should pass a regulation limiting the amount of profit from overseas sources to somehow influence domestic production for strategic purposes. I acknowledge that the problem along that line is complex and you nor I can barely speculate in spite of our past business experience, as to what might be more effective. The old Republican within me prefers more free market expression.. so therefore it’s my sense that we fulfill the need to strengthen our national strategic output within the system rather than trying to control the system with government mandates.
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Just a sidebar to what I just said. You already have a percentage of the population not overly fond of the “military industrial complex” because they think there’s too much collective control on government through lobbing efforts. What you would be doing by setting restrictions to expand strategic business output would be to expand the M-IC indirectly.
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Doug,
I worked for a company that put a label on every machined product and advertised: Made in America’
I sat in on may meetings and watched firsthand our company brainstorm every product individual widgets and machining processes and assembly cost to remain competitive to our competitors who purchased the same widgets made in China or other nation.
Our company lost sales in that market and finally was forced to do exactly the opposite of their original made in America policy. In other words, we were forced to meet our competitors’ prices or go bankrupt.
In manufacturing, labor and overhead costs become meaningless when China laborers are paid $200 a month and the Chinese government subsidies to pay for the machinery and buildings instead of the private industry in the USA.
President Trump tried to remedy with using trade balances. I wrote numerous posts of explanations which included a Warren Buffet recommendation 20 years ago which Congress chose to ignore.
Obama promised in his first campaign to renegotiate trade but in my opinion was not as familiar with industry as Trump and listened to numerous economic theories about a service economy and globalism as his choice of path when he governed.
Frankly Doug, if you never had experience in manufacturing, you cannot really appreciate fully what I have just explained in the same context as I personally experienced and watched as one by one the numerous sources in the USA either outsourcing their products or go bankrupt.
Meanwhile, a lot of people made a lot of money by selling product they paid $5.00 from another country and sold for $50.00 in the USA. Many of these same people bought out a lot of USA news media sources to control the facts from being explained what I just explained to you.
The end result is a service economy being former USA manufacturing workers and all the related workers such as accountants, managers, or support workers wound up taking jobs stocking WalMart shelves with imported products at minimum wages instead of skilled workers livable wages.
Regards and goodwill blogging.
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Oh, I fully (respect) and understand your context. It’s not a pretty sight when the people around you fall as victims of a changing economy. .. whether the change is “good” or “bad” in some context. It’s real people with real problems. It’s when the economy has a human face to it. Yet… where is it written where the market place stays the same for decades or even generations? Where does it say that some economic status quo that everyone got complacent with for 50-100 years has any sort of right of market perpetuity? As you well know, business survival is entirely about survival of the fittest… and nothing, not even Ma Bell, Sears Roebuck, or the Studebaker lasts forever.
I am not at all familiar with what “widget” your business example was making so given that I don’t wish to trivialize the struggle of that entity because I know not anything about them. But in general I can make an observation that the owners of that company, be they a family or a corporate shareholders, someone at the top had to make a decision if it was important to save the business AND employees, or just the business. A lot of firms have management so entwined over the decades with the personal “family” perception of their employees that it ends up being a giant weight pulling the entire business down. If management were serious about business continuation, then the business comes first for the owners… be they a family or shareholders. Once a firm decision among the owners to continue the business at all costs.. then that becomes the ultimate focus. of course, that’s presuming the market future of the widget being manufactured still is in demand and has a life cycle for future sales. Right or wrong.. employees are expendable. Now, that does not mean owners can’t be fair and lend assistance, and consider the displaced dedicated staff with some compassion. It’s just a matter of business that employees are in fact expendable.. to the degree where the employee(s) cease to be an asset.
As I am sure you well know, using advancing technology in the manufacturing process has generally been the bane of every employee because it forces change and re-education, and if the employee can’t adapt then they are let go.
With rapid globalism taking over since Nixon befriended China the first phase to get competitive was introducing the latest tech into manufacturing.. robotics, et al. that alone has changed our economy more than anything… not outsourcing overseas. That’s Trump old school biased perception. But what has happened is that the fading manufacturing base is occurring so quickly so as not to allow re-training for former employees… and many times employees are approaching their own end of career life and learning a new manufacturing occupation is not practical.
In other words.. to your company example, if the only way it could compete with the China labor pool to make widgets was to automate completely here in the States and keep Made in America important… then the former employees would still have to be terminated and replaced by robotics anyway.
Not knowing what your brainstorming meetings considered as alternatives.. I am guessing none of the serious options were… let’s automate and get rid of the employee overhead.
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Doug,
Robotics is only cost effective in manufacture of high-volume parts requirements.
To make a robotic machine requires parts made in small lots same as other specialized machinery or parts requirements.
There is a break-even cost involved to make machine parts to pay for robots or high-volume machines or maintenance parts requirements in smaller quantities.
In other words, there will always be a need for skilled machinists, engineers, maintenance, etc. in a manufacturing environment.
If it the cost to make a lot of 25 widgets with conventional machinery equipment and labor totals $20,000 dollars and the cost to engineer, program, a robot is $500,000, it is not practical or cost efficient, and probably not time efficient for the needs.
When it comes to medical items sold in the millions either daily or monthly, the machine and assembly cost is in the millions.
What it is even sadder is there are very few machine makers left in the USA. The majority are made in Germany now. Many of the specialized machinery once in the USA was sold and sent to China.
With every machine sent out of the country, so did the market for replacement parts for the machine evaporate in the USA.
When the plants shut down so did many communities’ workers went on welfare and government subsidies instead of working and paying taxes.
Sad. In my opinion, you need to quit reading all the nonsense articles you are reading written by the same economists who steered Obama’s service economy and have no experience in manufacturing.
Regards and goodwill blogging.
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Just curious offhand.. how do you explain the recent (up until the virus) the lowest unemployment in decades… if the loss in manufacturing jobs has displaced so many workers?
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Doug,
Livable wage differences between employment is the issue that makes a difference in my opinion.
Regards and goodwill blogging
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One has to at least consider the POSSIBILITY that the virus was intentionally man made- maybe as a test model that got out of control/
…with a soon antidote that will guarantee income for the rest of time.
As I said, POSSIBLY.
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Colorstorm,
Whether it was a test gone astray or a mutation from animal to human, the sad results or the asme for “the vase” according to this idiom.
“Whether the stone hits the vase or the vase hits the stone, the results are the same.
Sad for the vase when the vases are innocent victims.
Regards and goodwill blogging.
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Doesn’t make much since if it were a state sanctioned bio-weapon… much less something “that got away” from the lab by carelessness. To what end strategic value? Vaccine could easily be produced soon enough making any long term profit marginal at best, and there would be a total unpredictability as to the reaction of the country population you used it on… and totally uncontrollable as to where it spreads.
A terror weapon by some renegade lab person with an agenda? Again.. why the flu if you want to cause max damage to make a dramatic point?
Makes far more common sense that this was a natural result of hopping from animal to human…. inside a country that’s crammed with people and little disease containment.
Amazing what the Conservative mind thinks up to create doubt from an alternative reality, with little or no evidence.
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